Aside from Potter, since my last check in I've read:

Old Man's War -- eh. It didn't aggravate me like Redshirts did, but it stopped just as things were getting interesting and I was more annoyed by the cocktease than I was titillated into moving on. Not planning to continue.

The Great Hunt -- Book 2 of the Wheel of Time series. I know a lot of people who love this series, and while The Eye of the World didn't light my fire it laid some interesting groundwork and I was ready to see this series take off. Which it didn't. It kind of kept the same "laying groundwork" pace of the first novel. I tried to move on to The Dragon Reborn after this but I got a third of the way through and could not imagine reading eleven more books like this, especially when even the fans say they get steadily worse.

House of Secrets -- Chris Columbus' debut novel is so hilariously inept I tried to continue reading ironically. But I don't get back time I spend on shit even if I spend it ironically, so I bailed after what was probably no more than 20 pages (audiobook so I dunno).

You're Only as Good as Your Next One: 100 Great Films, 100 Good Films, and 100 for Which I Should Be Shot -- enjoyed this one, memoirs of a film producer recalling how some films got made (and how some others didn't).

Doctor Sleep -- I guess this is a sequel to The Shining in the most literal sense, but it could have been totally unrelated and worked just as well, arguably better. Had to close my eyes and think of England a few times when things got a little too schtick-y, but I made it through to the end and it was enjoyable enough once the story really got rolling.

The Disaster Artist -- Greg Sestero's memoir of his ?friendship? (even he seems unsure) with Tommy Wiseau and the making of THE ROOM. Sestero (with undoubtedly more than a little help from co-writer Tom Bissell) is sharp, funny, self-deprecating and manages to tell the bizarre story with a sense of sympathy and even affection for the strange man at the heart of the madness. My only gripe is that the story ends when THE ROOM premieres -- leaving out almost entirely the story of its cult success. Still, if you love THE ROOM in its gonzo glory, it's well worth a read.

The Cuckoo's Calling -- Like everyone else, I read this after I found out J.K. Rowling wrote it under a pseudonym. I'm glad she did. Unlike The Casual Vacancy, in which she clearly felt the pressure of proving that she wasn't just a children's fantasy writer, so every page was covered in fuck and cunt and graphic descriptions of sex and masturbation, in her anonymity she felt free to just tell a story, the kind of story HP fans will know she most enjoys -- a whodunit. A dispensible but enjoyable mystery, she says she plans to write more stories with the central characters, and I'll keep my eye out for them.

Hyperion -- a sort of sci-fi Canterbury Tales, an anthology of characters telling their personal histories with a strange alien deity known as "the Shrike," which is based on the planet Hyperion, and which has drawn them for a final pilgrimage. The stories are fascinating, but it's frustrating that the novel ends as they finally set off in earnest to meet the Shrike. I guess Fall of Hyperion, the "sequel," is the second half of the story, which I'll get to eventually.

The Devil You Know -- urban fantasy, a ghost story/mystery. I was on an urban fantasy kick a while back so I bought this one and then didn't read it because I got off the kick when Sandman Slim was underwhelming, but I think I'll seek out any sequels there may be.

A Universe From Nothing -- I'm gonna have to read this one a few more times before I really get it, but a cool primer on the latest views regarding the origins (and future) of the universe.

Star Wars: The Dark Lord Trilogy -- Darth Praxus recommended the Episode 3 novelization as being better and giving more justification to the story and events of the film. When I sought it out I discovered that it was bundled, on Kindle, with a novel bridging Eps 2 and 3, and a follow-up to ROTS about "the rise of Darth Vader." It's taken me six months to read, chipping away in between other books. He's right -- ROTS is much improved by the novel being able to explain what in the blue Yoda the characters are thinking. Anakin's turn is much better handled, although his leap from loyal Jedi to murdering children is still a little too fast and can't really be made to work, though Stover tries his darndest. In the end it winds up feeling like the novel came first and just got an incompetent adaptation, which I guess is praise? The lead-in and lead-out novels are fluff, though, don't bother with those.

Permanent Midnight -- I mentioned on Twitter that I'd heard a lot about the making of the show ALF being a nightmare for everyone involved, and Eddie mentioned it was documented in this memoir by one of the writers. This... is not a book about ALF. He mentions ALF in passing a few times just to establish a general timeline, but this is a book about Jerry Stahl's life as a drug addict who happens to have written some TV shows somewhere in the haze. I'm "liking" it in the same way one "likes" the extremely similar REQUIEM FOR A DREAM -- it's raw and intense and I'm glad that it exists and I'm going to finish it (about 1/3 in currently), and then I will probably cry and never go near it again because Jesus Christ.

You think Westboro wouldn't LOVE to throw some folk up on the rack if they could get away with it? The only reason there's been "progress" is because our society has steadily been willing to put up with less and less of religion's (specifically Christianity's) crap over the centuries. Take a look at fundamentalist Islamic countries, though. Shit still happens daily. I literally cannot ever go to Dubai because I would be at risk of arrest or worse for being openly gay.

Science doesn't know everything but has a way of correcting that, and has a tendency of finding answers right enough to be getting on with. Science is the reason we're even able to have this conversation. 

Religion doesn't know everything either, but never admits it, has no way of correcting itself, and offers nothing useful in terms of human advancement except for what it piggybacks onto scientific observation.

I'm more willing to trust someone who's honestly wrong sometimes than one who lies about always being right.

True, but they do not change the nature of the world itself. If you want to understand the world as it is, you have to train yourself to set those things aside, or at least be willing to if the two -- objective reality and your subjective experience -- come into conflict.

And how much time do you spend considering faeries? They are as much a possible factor as gods.

It's certainly possible. But the more evidence we collect about certain aspects of our world, the less likely it is. There comes a tipping point where it would be more difficult to explain how all the evidence we have for a particular phenomenon can exist without a particular explanation being true, than it is to accept the explanation as most likely being correct. In which case the explanation remains accepted unless and until new evidence arises that alters the balance back the other way.

But the impulse to do so for ANY event is no different.

It's wondrous, no doubt. But that doesn't make it magic or impossible. After all, we know for a fact that it happened.

I wish him luck reconciling the natural history of Earth with the claim that the Earth existed before the Sun did.

This is very much in line with the scientific perspective. Except, again, for the part about the wizard.

Never for certain, but we can get close enough to be useful.

We don't KNOW that electricity isn't carried on the backs of invisible, undetectable faeries. We never can, if you want to believe in them. But what we HAVE sorted out about electricity seems to be reliable in that it consistently behaves the way we expect it to, so we seem to be close enough to knowing about electricity in some ways that we might as well use the term as shorthand. The addition of faeries gives us nothing useful in our understanding and so the possibility is best ignored until it has a reason not to be.

Science makes predictions. Religion, at best, manages retcons.

The jump from Deism to Theism is a massive one. Even if you could demonstrate that a creative force existed at the beginning, that does not automatically mean that this force still exists, is still involved in the universe, has interest or knowledge in our existence, keeps a naughty-or-nice list, etc. Nor would it be a given that a being which CLAIMED to be the original creative force was ACTUALLY the original creative force.

SMAUG is not better than UNEXPECTED JOURNEY. Everyone just thinks so because their expectations were lower going in.

Funny you say that, portions of that sequence reminded me precisely of the ridefilm sequence in TINTIN.

If this thread makes you uncomfortable, there are plenty of others you can read instead. I don't come into the Doctor Who thread and try to shut it down just because I don't watch it. We're well below the danger threshold.

Anyway, Pastormacman already offered a solution. I asked him what he would say if a Muslim made the same claims as he did and he said until such a Muslim actually sat in front of him to do so, they could be dismissed as entirely fictional.

Well, if those are the house rules, so be it. Until God registers an account and posts on his own behalf, he may be dismissed as entirely fictional.

Besides, if you need proof there's no god, go see THE HOBBIT and remember there's still one more to go.

Just got back.

Ugh, garbage. I learned so much from the LOTR making ofs and it's like Jackson is making the wrong choices deliberately. I almost started crying in the theater at how bad it was. I really doubt I'm going to bother with the third film.

Sure, but then what's the point of trying to please it or argue about it? If everything it does is of its own incomprehensible whims then it might just as well be a hurricane or other force of nature and is best ignored unless it is actively involving itself.

Which, indeed, explains cats.

Which I would be fine with if that argument didn't always appear after the person making it has gone to great lengths to explain what he wants and why he does the things he does and how those things can absolutely be known, only jumping to the "incomprehensible" gambit when someone points out that they're talking gibberish.

EDIT: This does actually show up in the Bible, of course, in the story of Job. God completely ruins Job's life to win a bet with the devil, and when Job asks him why God pretty much says "Fuck you, you don't know me."

Which, I mean, fair enough, but then fuck you too buddy.

It is amazing that you are posting this in a thread about the existence of God without irony.

So you understand that you claiming I'VE made up my mind and you haven't is a complete cop-out and nonsense to boot, yes? I'm willing to change my mind based on new information. You're not. Don't project your intellectual rigidity onto me.

And how many statements of that kind did he make to your mother or father-in-law or anyone else that did not come to pass? I don't expect you to know -- you'd only hear about them if they did come to pass because my goodness how remarkable. Any predictions that didn't come to pass would just be forgotten and never mentioned. This is what I'm referring to when I say counting the hits and forgetting the misses.

But your understanding of your experience is contingent on your reason. If I see a curtain moving in my house I could assume it was a ghost and say nobody can take it from me because I saw a curtain moving and I know ghosts move curtains therefore it was a ghost that moved the curtain. But maybe the window was open and I didn't notice. The experience would be the same, my interpretation of it is the question.

So, again, YOU'RE the one who has made up his mind and is unwilling to investigate alternative ideas, not me. You have repeatedly accused me of having my mind absolutely made up without possibility of change but I do not. You do. I would like you to acknowledge that you have been stating a falsehood before we continue.

...You believe that Muslims are mythical? Well, I can't say I have a pre-loaded response for that one.

As long as you only count the hits and ignore the misses.

I don't assume this at all. You understand it's possible to believe you are wrong without thinking you're doing it deliberately?

Great stuff happens to everyone. Shitty stuff happens to everyone. You choose to frame them respectively as God's will/your failure. I'm sure whatever is happening in your life is awesome and you anticipated it in advance and it happened and that's great.

But if you anticipated it and it didn't happen -- as I'm sure has also happened in your life -- you wouldn't be using it as an example right now. You'd have written it off as you failing to understand God's plan and chalk it up as a point against yourself, not against the idea that God has anything to do with any of it.

I'm not the one who has made up my mind. According to your posts, you've pre-determined that anything good that happens is to God's credit and anything bad that happens is your own failure, and so anything that happens will reinforce that.

If good things ALWAYS happened to you when "God told you" they would exactly as you believed you were told they would, without fail, that would be quite a bit of evidence in your favor. But based on what you've vaguely stated here, it seems to succeed/fail on about the same ratio as it would without God entering the equation.

What I've stated here is a point of falsifiability -- or at least a path -- against my stance. If the above were true, I would have to seriously consider that my stance is wrong. Can you offer the same?

Now you're arguing with a straw man. Don't give me the preprogrammed talking points responding to what you think an atheist believes -- try asking me instead.

Not to mention that every religion's adherents say the exact same thing.

Pastor, a Muslim comes to you and says the exact thing you said here, verbatim except Quran instead of Bible. What is your reaction?

Restraint.